Precept & Practice – FEBRUARY 17 – Temperance

The true spiritual gift of temperance, therefore, holds evenly the balances in which all vices and all virtues alike are weighed.   It maintains a righteous proportion in all things, and will not rest satisfied with control in one direction and excess in another.   It commands self-control in everything;  in speech and sleep, in work and recreation, in gain and ambition, not less than in food and drink.   It condemns equally every form of excess:  exaggeration in utterance, extravagance in taste, outbursts of temper, in-ordinance of every form of appetite.   It is just this quality of evenness which distinguishes the divine grace of spiritual self-control from what is called temperance in ordinary speech.   Ordinary temperance is apt to be uneven and excessive;  excessive in its laudations of a single virtue, and in its denunciations of a single vice, excessively forgetful of other vices.

Bishop Diggle (Sermons for Daily Life)

If thou would’st have all about thee like the colours of some fresh picture in a clear light…..   be temperate in all thy religious notions, in love, in wine, in all things, and of a peaceful heart with thy fellows.

Walter Pater

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From the Introduction to Precept and Practice

The kindly welcome given to my other little books, ‘Being and Doing’ and ‘Character and Conduct,’ must be my excuse for adding another collection of extracts to the number now in circulation.

The quotations are gathered from the books of many earnest thinkers, and deal with Life in all its length and breadth, with ourselves, our characters, our plain unvarnished faults and weaknesses, our often untoward circumstances, and with all that drags us down;-  with our purposes, our religion, our love and friendships, and with all that uplifts us;-  with our relation to others, our influence and responsibilities, and finally with those stages of our journey which bring us to the Road’s Last Turn and to the Silent Land.

CONSTANCE  M. WHISHAW